Mr. Green Deutschland

Mr. Green Deutschland

Refugee child, violent leftist activist- turned-foreign-minister, pugnacious politician, long-distance runner, yo-yo dieter, and last but not least,Übervater of the German Greens – Joschka Fischer’s biography is the kind of stuff that film directors love.

Danquart has knit all this together into a fast-moving two-and-a-half-hour portrait of Fischer and the six decades of postwar Germany that are mirrored in his life: from RAF-terror to reunification, the wars in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq,Atomausstieg, Hartz IV and mass unemployment – all of which Fischer was involved with in one way or another.

At the same time it doesn’t simply reiterate the tale of the “last rock ’n’ roller in German politics”, repeated like a mantra over the years, but also analyses the mistakes Fischer made.

Only one point of critique: though production wrapped last year, the film inexplicably ends the story in 2005, thus ignoring Fischer’s questionable current role as an advisor to the Nabucco pipeline project.